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New iPod: Ready for the battle?
The next month, one de products de greater success de the digital era turns five years: iPod de Apple Computer is the music reproducer. From 2001, several rival potentials have gone and come without pain nor glory. Apple dominates 76% de the market de reproducers de music in the United States and has a 88% de the market de legal unloadings in EE.UU through its virtual store iTunes. The company has sold more than 60 million apparatuses.
Nevertheless, in little more de a month, iPod could face one de its majors challenges. After several attempts bankrupts to fight to the iconic reproducer, Microsdet will mount a new attack with a called apparatus Zune. Like iPod, the Zune closely will be bound to a sdetware and a virtual store de music.
In addition, the service de Rhapsody music, de RealNetworks, one de the main competitors de iTunes in EE.UU., will send its own reproducer, altogether with SanDisk, company that at the moment a place in this market occupies distant secondly.
So for the Christmas season, Apple has advanced some de the most radical changes in years in iPod and the program iTunes. The company redesigned the models iPod Nano and Shuffle, reduced the prices de all the models and extended the capacity in some. Also it sent a new function search in the reproducers and added games to color and capacity to reproduce films to larger iPod, among others things. In addition, remodeló easier and funny sdetware iTunes, doing it to use.
We were proving new iPod and iTunes by several weeks and our verdict is that the new apparatuses are more versatile and cheap than ever. Sdetware iTunes improved still more, in spite de having a great disadvantage: its main new function is so demanding in the graph that does not work well in some less computers.
For iPod de normal size, the main changes are in capacity, price, duration de battery and sdetware. The basic version, with capacity de 30 gigabytes, costs now in EE.UU. US$249, a US$50 reduction that supposedly has the intention to press to Microsdet. The model more also advanced costs US$50 less than the version de year past, that is to say US$349, and its capacity was extended de 60 to 80 gigabytes. The duration de the battery for reproduction de videos also improved much, de 2 hours for the version previous de the basic model to 3 hour and a half. The model more advanced now includes a battery that lasts 6.5 hours for video reproduction, against 4 hours de the previous version. (The duration for the music reproduction has not changed).
Apple says that all new models will be available in Latin America between aims de October and principles de November. The prices are equal to those de EE.UU., but it is necessary to add the local taxes and tariffs to them.
The screens de iPod also are a 60% more brilliants. And there is another interesting aspect: a tool was gotten up search that allows to find archives by alphabetical order using the displacement wheel. In our tests, it worked well. Besides seeing whole films in iPod de normal size, now classic games to color like Tetris and CAP-Man can be added.
iPod Nano owns a new function search, but it does not reproduce films or games. The new version has an aluminum cover similar to old Mini iPod, which returns it a little more resistant than the previous version and allows a greater variety de shining colors. The three versions de the Nano stayed, but the capacities have been duplicated without increasing the prices. The basic Nano has capacity de 2 gigabytes now and costs US$149 (only it comes in silver-plated color). The medium one has 4 gigabytes and costs US$199 (it comes in four colors). The most advanced now it has 8 gigabytes and it is worth US$249 (only he is available in black).
The most radical changes registered in sdetware iTunes. Sdetware did not evolve so well with videos as it did with music and he was visually boring. The new version, iTunes 7, defers new functions: most interesting it is the call Cover Flow, an optional way to see his collection de music. The part superior de the screen shows title pages de its albums and, as the mouse or the keyboard sails by the titles de the songs with, or reproduces a subject, the title page de the corresponding album appears in center. If it does not have title pages de all the CD, iTunes free looks for them to 7 in Internet. The Cover Flow also works with musical videos. Unfortunately, the function is so heavy from the graphical point de view that has problems in some computers, especially less machines with Windows. Apple said that it is reviewing the problem. New iTunes also adds other functions. It eliminates the pauses between subjects (especially for the lovers de classic music) and separates libraries for music, films, programs de TV, podcasts, audiolibros and games. And when iPod is connected, it defers one more a cleaner interface. It is impossible to know if Apple will be able to maintain its impressive quota de market with the new competition, but goes to the battle with better products and better prices.
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